EC-Council of Certified Ethical Hacker fame has released a new title, Certified Network Defense Architect (CNDA). According to their web site, the course material and content is EXACTLY the same as CEH. Huh?

I was very curious why they felt the need to create another name for the already highly popular CEH. In their FAQ, they answered that question:

Why did EC-Council create a duplicate course and certification similar to CEH?

The United States government agencies are too sensitive to the word "hacker" in a certification program. Based on their feedback and request we have created an identical course and certification with a different title without the word "hacker" in it.

Oh boy, more letters to add on after my name! I already have overr 10,000 comic boooks, now I can continue on to collect more certs! I recently talked to a recrutier that wanted dates of my certfications, including my Brainbench! (http://www.brainbench.com) I have about 13 Brainbench certs, back before they started charging mon-ay for the exams. Of course, Brainbench doesn't mean anything compared to Microsoft certs. But this guy asked me if I was an over-achiever or something. I said, "Naw, I was just messing around and passed the exams", or something similar. Now here's a new certiifcation and I don't even need to do an exam? Or is there an exam fo it? EC-council would miss out on a lot of cash if they gave us the cert without doing an exam.

I've noticed an aversion to the word "hacker" even without worrying about it with the governemnt. They see the CEH on my resume, they look at me with one eye closed, and are thinking, 'Should we hire this guy? What if he gets pissed off at us and decides to go rouge on us? He could take us down without even trying!"As a CEH, we have to have a lot of willpower to avoid putting ourselves in prison. No matter how much they piss us off, we CANNOT destroy their systems after we leave. They HAVE to be able to TRUST us.

MCP, MCP+I, MCSA, MCSE(NT4/W2K), CCNA, CCA, NWCCC, VH-PIRTS, CEH --------------------"hackers are like jedi, crackers are like the sith: do not fall prey to the dark side".